Page 65 of The Life We Left Behind

It was my father who appeared first. He adjusted the glasses on his face as he looked at me with concern.

“Trace? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

He looked past me out into the driveway as if the answers would be out there.

My eyes squinted as I watched him. Just how involved was he in this? My father had always been my mother’s puppet, and I had no idea why. He always gave in to her ridiculous whims, and it was only now that I started to wonder what it was that she had over him. He wasn’t a weak man. I’d seen him tear through business deals with no mercy, but for her, he’d always step back, even if it cost him dearly.

“Where is she?” I seethed, not able to deal with anything else right now.

“Trace? Why are you here causing a scene?” My mother’s cool voice floated down the staircase where she stood, clasping the oak railing with her manicured fingers. Her pale blond hairwas pulled tight into the same chignon she wore every day, and she brushed her hand against the non-existent creases in her skirt before descending the rest of the steps.

“What have you done?” I shouted, taking a step closer before holding myself back with a growl.

“Trace! I can see that you’re angry, but you can’t speak to your mother that way.” My father stepped in front of me, but I could see the conflict brewing in his eyes. He might not know what she had done, but he knew full well what she was capable of.

“If this is about that ridiculous restraining order…” My mother’s heels clacked across the tile floor as I reeled back in shock but then shook my head. This wasn’t the time for that. I’d deal with whatever other mess she’d created later.

“Iknoweverything,” I growled.

I thought I saw the slight flare of her eyes, but she quickly covered her shock and tutted, turning away from me, and walking into the drawing room. “I won’t stand in the foyer and discuss our private family business. Jasper, will you find Emmie and ask her to bring us some tea?”

“No!” She wasn’t going to attempt to cover this up. “Stay. You need to hear this.”

My mother’s eyes narrowed as she perched herself on the edge of an overly stuffed armchair that I could believe had never been sat on until this day. We never used this room. It was one more layer of the facade she’d created around this family. “Jasper!” she snapped.

My father looked between the two of us before he stepped into the drawing room and folded his hands behind his back as he waited. I could see the annoyance in the way her shoulders tensed. It would have terrified me as a child because I’d known there would be retribution, but now that I was an adult, I couldn’t care less about catering to her whims.

“I think this is something I need to hear, Regina,” my father said carefully before he looked at me and nodded for me to continue.

Her scoff of outrage only fueled my need to throttle her, but I didn’t let it bother me. She’d tried to strip me of my happiness and my family. Well, now I was going to return the favor.

“She had Delaney run out of town. She actually blackmailed her to leave,” I said, turning to my father. “She threatened to ruin the James’s if Delaney didn’t leave.”

Jasper gasped, looking at my mother in shock. “Regina! Why?”

My father had always loved Delaney. He’d always blamed himself for her leaving, for not dealing with the situation well enough to save me from the heartbreak.

My mother’s back straightened as she sat tall and pulled her shoulders back, preparing herself. She knew this wasn’t the last of it, and she wasn’t going to back down.

“Because she was pregnant with my son,” I told him, answering for her and hopefully putting the final nail in her coffin.

My father turned to me, his mouth hanging open in shock as words failed him. We stood there in silence, watching my unrepentant mother as she straightened her skirt and then finally leaned back into the armchair and delicately crossed her legs like she had full control of the room. In a way, she did.

Eventually, he staggered to another seat and dropped down.

“She kept the bastard, then?” my mother asked, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “I always thought she had more sense than that.”

“Regina!” my father snapped again. “What the hell has gotten into you?”

“Me? Me! All I do is to protect this family legacy. Someone has to.” The scathing look she sent at my father no doubt heldsome other kind of meaning, but I didn’t have it in me to care right now. All I could think about was what she’d done. What she had cost me.

“The family? My son is the next generation of this family. Or did you not think about that?”

“Please! That child will never have the Farrington name.”

“And I wish I didn’t.” She looked completely shocked by the sentiment, but I’d never been more serious about anything in my life. “Did you really not care about how much this would hurt me? Do you feel so little for me,Mother?”

I all but spat the title, one she’d never really deserved and, at times, one she never seemed to have wanted.

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